'Sweet Girl' review: Even charismatic Jason Momoa can't save this movie

WHAT IT'S ABOUT After Amanda Cooper (Adria Arjona) dies of cancer when an experimental drug is shadily pulled off the market right before her treatment, her husband Ray (Jason Momoa) sets out for revenge in the Netflix action thriller "Sweet Girl."

Teenage daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) joins Ray as he sets his sights on the shady corporate-political interests that sabotaged his wife's survival chances. Also involved in the chase: FBI agents, a relentless assassin, and Amy Brenneman as a politician.

It's an '80s- or early '90s-era genre picture transplanted to 2021 — the sort of movie that might have once starred Kurt Russell or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

MY SAY "Sweet Girl" gets the classic action plot template right.

It gets some elements of the aesthetics right, including one breakneck scene on the Pittsburgh Light Rail and a framing device involving a chase on the roof of that city's PNC Park.

It even gets the star right, as Jason Momoa once again shows himself to be a charismatic screen talent who understands how to deliver one-dimensional dialogue with a degree of earnestness that never lapses into self-seriousness.

But he can't save the movie, a dour slog through rote conspiratorial territory without a distinguishing factor to be found beyond the capable lead.

It's amazing how often filmmakers these days try to inject some life into the action genre but forget that the best of these movies work as well as they do because they don't take themselves too seriously.

The makers of "Sweet Girl" — director Brian Andrew Mendoza and screenwriters Philip Eisner and Gregg Hurwitz — do not project the self-awareness required to recognize that any movie in which a character says something like "You are my village, and I am the opposing force," is fundamentally ridiculous.

It would be unreasonable to expect a retread of, say, Schwarzenegger's one-liners in the similarly plotted 1985 classic "Commando," but there's hardly a moment of levity in the entire movie.

The filmmakers seem to believe "Sweet Girl" has something meaningful to say about family ties, and corporate manipulation of the drug market, but it just doesn't.

The audience is therefore left with scenes that have little effect beyond recalling better movies.

These include a diner confrontation between Momoa and the assassin chasing him (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) that aspires to evoke the famous Robert De Niro-Al Pacino confrontation in "Heat" but plays like a first draft of that scene being performed in a dinner theater.

Not content to simply make a straightforward action picture, collect that sweet Netflix money and call it a day, the filmmakers also tack on a third act twist that undermines everything that's happened before it and suggests a lack of confidence in the story being told.

WIthout violating this review's sacred spoiler-free zone, suffice it to say that the twist offers a totally different direction for the story that might have worked had the filmmakers simply gone after it from the outset.

It's one of the oldest cliches in the book, but it's also true: sometimes less really is more.

BOTTOM LINE "Sweet Girl" would be a much better movie had it been content with simply being an entertaining, straightforward action flick.